


Worse in the dark

by samchandler1986



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 22:50:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11000643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samchandler1986/pseuds/samchandler1986
Summary: The Doctor reminisces. Memories are so much worse in the dark...





	Worse in the dark

_“They can’t know I’m blind, Missy. No one can know. Memories are so much worse in the dark.”_ – The Doctor, Extremis

* * *

 

He’s read, of course, about how dulling one sense can sharpen the others. He can hear the soft _tick-tick_ of the clock, taste the bookish dust in the air. He pictures the motes rising in sunlight he knows is streaming through the office window; the tell-tale warmth of it on his skin. A sunny afternoon, faint sounds of laughter and chatter from the students outside. And he is sitting in the dark—

 _—the dark, the dark, all around him. Dank and utterly black. He sits and he waits, like they told him. Hiding. Cold biting into his bones, as the fear curls around his hearts. Trying not to think it, lest his thoughts settle on the fear and make it real:_ they aren’t going to come back—

He shivers, in the present, thirteen skins and several thousand years later. Dark is useful, he tells himself.  Dark is good. _Without the dark, we’d never see the stars_ _—_

He stiffens, long fingers fumbling for the sonic sunglasses. His hand is shaking as he pushes them onto his nose. And the dark goes away. It’s a poor simulacrum of sight, but he’ll take it right now; the greenish outline of the office. It’s like a game, making his way outside and around the campus, smiling and greeting people he can’t see. Getting away with it. He expects to take the glasses off and the world to return.

The reality is returning to his office and taking off what feels like a blindfold to find that he is still blind. _This is your world now_ , he tells himself, stern as he would be to a wayward companion. _There are plenty of species out there that_ live _in the dark_. _There are plenty who are blinded. Adapt. Survive._

His mantra, after all, for more than two thousand years. Why should this be any different?

— _the dark, the dark_. _As long as it cloaks Darllium her life isn’t over. While she sleeps, the stars turn slowly overhead through the skylight. Watching the steady rise and fall of her breathing beneath the blanket is a balm for a wound he knows he’s never going to understand. Fate handed her a terrible destiny that she somehow twisted into a fairy tale. And this is her happy ending. He’s never quite had the knack_ _—_

Waking up is back to front, the vivid imagery of his dreams dissolving as he opens ruined eyes to the dark. His cheeks are wet, he pretends not to notice. Fumbles for the glasses again, for want of something better to do. It’s two o’clock. There’s a faculty meeting to terrorise. Another game. Until the chapel bell tolls and he daydreams in technicolour.

— _the dark, the dark; the fires burn bright in Trenzalore’s long night. Land of perpetual twilight, he’s joked with Barnable. And then another one, that wasn’t Barnable. And another. Come to think of it, he might have been making that same joke to anyone who’d listen for the last two hundred years. Less funny, in these moments of twitching clarity, to realise the dark has invaded his mind. Synapses dimming as senility sets in. Oh yes, he thinks, head nodding along without his say-so, the long candle of his life will soon be snuffed_ _—_

Later, Nardole brings him tea, suffused with worry. He pretends he doesn’t notice. Nardole pretends he isn’t pretending. Just as well he cannot see his little round face; both of them are terrible liars.

The glasses are starting to give him a headache, his brain straining for the stimulus it has come to expect after two thousand years of working eyeballs in his skull. He takes them off, and tries to distract himself with pointless screwdriver repair by touch.  

He knows what he’s doing. He’s avoiding the vault. He’s avoiding the inevitable. Because that, at least, he is good at. When the screwdriver is fixed, he takes up his guitar. There’s a tune under his fingers, starting with that familiar riff on the G chord.

— _the dark, the dark_. _He can’t remember her, but he knows the darkness was theirs. She stood with him in shadow and made the impossible choices, between bad and worse. Her hair was dark, and her eyes. The longer he is without sight the clearer she comes, out of that dark, the dark that was theirs, all they allowed themselves to have. Because if she couldn’t meet his eyes then they could both pretend not to see what was reflected there_ _—_

His hand stills on the strings. In the dark, her music in his ears, she could be waiting just out of reach like she used to. And maybe this time he’d say the right things, and maybe this time she’d listen—

— _just listen_ —

 —and maybe this time he wouldn’t be afraid—

— _you’re always going to be afraid_ _—_

He puts down the guitar. It’s time to visit the vault.


End file.
